i’ve always been a kid of literature.
my problem was, that my family is not.
i come from a family who have not graduated high school, and i am the first of 6 kids to graduate.
my grandparents weren’t ever too intelligent either. not to put down those i come from,
but to give you a back story-
i have always wanted to soak up all knowledge possible.
i don’t know where to start.
i would love to expand my vocabulary-
grow my brain-
and take in as much knowledge as possible- and just like everyone else- have the answers to everything.
i am actually a filmmaker who works at a grocery store- who seeks to find my place in business.
and maybe even start writing. but id love to find my place in books.
even starting from basic literature like The Great Gatsby, Beowulf, and Shakespeare. which i’ve never read but a passage from each.
are these books i should start from? are there any other books that might help me start my journey?
asking for a friend.
by Present-Question-964
1 Comment
The Great Gatsby is easy enough to read, but hard to glimpse any immediate meaning / values from, because it’s a 98 year old period piece. Shakespeare is significantly older than that and hard to read without extensive commentary. Beowulf is mediaeval and would barely even register as English to most contemporary readers. These are all bad places to start (The Great Gatsby is the least bad, and they get worse in order).
If you’re not much of a reader but you want to get into it, start with contemporary fiction. There’s a whole slew of challenges associated with old usage, historical settings, having to translate experiences to modern equivalents and so on. Skip all that for now.
Start with a topic that is close to your heart, or that you want to know more about. The process of growing up in a certain place. A certain experience, like heartbreak or crushing poverty or addiction or escaping abuse. A locale, like the Pacific Northwest or the Deep South. The struggles that come with being of a certain race, or gender, or sexuality. Start with something that is interesting to you, that you can connect to, and that is contemporary. Experience the whole slew of emotions that comes with connecting to a book. Then you expand from there, and work those “empathy muscles”, and gradually challenge yourself to connect with people and stories who are more different from your own, whether by period or location or interest or circumstance.
Start with a subject matter that makes you feel seen. That you want to see represented right. Whether that is lower class life in an inner city environment or bisexual awakening or substance abuse struggles or struggling with biracial heritage or expat alienation or sibling rivalry or mental health issues or bourgeois ennui or body dysmorphia or teenage angst…. whatever it is that feels personal or interesting to you.